Don’t Mind Me, I’m Just The Janitor

I have been covering the Tech and the Smartphone Beat now just under 3 years. 2015 was fairly calm with some excitement here and there. The year 2016 rolled in quietly … but it was just being sneaky, because by the time the second quarter of 2016 arrived, the neighborhood parties were in full swing.

The parties were wild and crazy, complete with a slide as each new gadget was released and slid down into the crowds. I expected 2017 to be even wilder. But, here it is the first day of August and it has been eerily quiet.

As the end of the first quarter of 2017 rolled in, remembering my days as a janitor, I began to suspect that the:

The advertising giant's

The giant retailer’s

And most of the large corporations

All had been caught completely off guard as to the speed of the world going mobile. They were not prepared for it. They went home to their families that night with no idea what was about to occur.

When they awoke the next morning and looked out their windows everything looked the same as the day before. Most of them, high fived themselves with that last glance in the mirror as the expensive shades went on as they grabbed their Smartphones and headed out the door.

But, as the day began to take shape, it became evident that while they had slept, the rules had somehow changed. Before the sun went down they realized that “Convenience Dominates” was a phrase, not a phase. But it was too late.

Now, how do I know this? Well, I can tell you that most of those CEO’s do get those fancy business newspapers... but they don’t read them. In fact, they don’t read anything.

You see, I use to be their janitor and I always found those fancy business newspapers folded over just once, nice and neat inside their one and only trash can. Well, guess who took those business newspapers home then read them and studied them? Me. Yours truly!

It took my Mother years to recover financially from those 2 tornadoes that had tossed us around like loose change. So, I knew that if I was going to rise to my destiny, I had to do two things to get there:

Shut up and listen

Read and then read some more

I knew there would not be any college for me unless I could somehow pay for it myself.

One year later, after those storms had rolled in and had changed our lives, at the age of 13, my Mother was bringing home college level books for me to read. History, Philosophy, Psychology, Government ... to name a few.

I had a neighbor down the street that was kind enough to give me the daily newspaper after they read it, just so I could keep up with current events. The closet library was 15 miles.

So, years later, when my office was just a closet filled with mop buckets and cleaning supplies ... finding those newspapers inside those trash cans was like Christmas morning and my birthday all wrapped into one big present to me.

Now … roll the dice to 2017

I found a headline that confirmed my thoughts ...

“Consumers are evolving more rapidly than businesses” smashingmagazine.com

The Flurry Analytics Blog, announced that “due to a sharp increase in the time spent by Smartphone users in different app categories, non-gaming apps had overtaken games in the rapid rise of the app usage.

Customization apps topped the list, with a staggering 332% rise in session usage.

Mobile versions of newspapers and magazines came in second, with a huge growth of 135%.

Productivity tools and apps came in third in the usage list, with a 125% rise.

Lifestyle and shopping solutions recorded an 81% growth and were ranked fourth.

Travel, sport, health and fitness utilities, along with messengers and social apps, gained from 53 to 54%.

Games turned out to be the only outlier, with a 1% decline in users’ time.”